I’m typing this from my dorm room at Dalian’s Liaoning Normal University rather than the comfort of my own home because I wanted to immerse myself in Chinese to increase my fluency. Has it worked? I think so, but I am honestly not quite sure.
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Or, why learning to read Chinese is twice as hard as you might think. Here’s part of the label on the back of the power adapter for my girlfriend’s laptop (Taiwanese model):
This adapter is made in China. So maybe you’d expect it to be labeled in simplified Chinese. On the other hand, it was sold in Taiwan, so maybe you’d expect it to be labeled in traditional Chinese. You’d be wrong either way: it’s labeled in a seemingly random mix of both! (more…)
When I first started learning Mandarin, “le” (了) seemed simple enough: slap it on the end of a sentence, or sometimes right after the verb, to make the sentence past-tense. Then it started creeping into other places that seemingly had nothing to do with the past tense — even in sentences about future actions — and I became confused. Now I think maybe it’s starting to make sense again. (more…)
I have a new guilty pleasure, thanks to my friend Jenny: a kung-fu costume drama comedy soap-opera adventure show called Tian Xia Di Yi (天下第一) — which really means something like “World’s Finest,” but they call it “Hero” in the English program listings. (more…)
Earlier this year I decided to start learning Mandarin Chinese. I’ve been studying pretty diligently for the past few months, soaking up language CDs and educational software and textbooks and bugging my Chinese friends to critique my pronunciation. I can’t hold more than a very basic conversation yet, but I’ve learned enough to experience some new, strange, and interesting things. (more…)